To compare the effects of a potent rat renin inhibitor peptide (RIP) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor on the intrarenal and plasma renin-angiotensin systems, anesthetized Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with an infusion of vehicle, ramipril or graded doses of the rat RIP (acetyl-His-Pro-Phe-Val-statine-Leu-he-NH2) for 30 min. Kidney and plasma samples were processed rapidly, a...

In the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, phospholipase C may play a role in hyphal extension at the growing tips as part of a growth-sensing mechanism that activates calcium release from internal stores to mediate continued expansion of the hyphal tip. One candidate for a tip-localized phospholipase C is PLC-1. We characterized morphology and growth characteristics of a knockout mutant (KO ...

Recent advances in human islet transplantation have highlighted the need for expanding the pool of beta-cells available for transplantation. We have developed three transgenic models in which growth factors (hepatocyte growth factor [HGF], placental lactogen, or parathyroid hormone-related protein) have been targeted to the beta-cell using rat insulin promoter (RIP). Each displays an increase i...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Intensive blood pressure (BP) target decreases blood perfusion of kidneys that attenuates the benefits of BP treatment in elderly hypertensive individuals. The optimal BP goal for renal function in the hypertensive elderly has been unclear. We investigated the impact of BP on renal function to define the appropriate BP target in the elderly. METHODS A total of 28,258 elderly s...

The Notch ligand Jagged1 is subject to regulated intramembrane proteolysis (RIP) which yields a soluble ectodomain (sJag) and a soluble Jagged1 intracellular domain (JICD). The full-length Jagged1 protein enhances prostate cancer (PCa) cell proliferation and is highly expressed in metastatic cells. However, little is known regarding the mechanisms by which Jagged1 or its RIP-generated fragments...

The mechanics of rip currents are complex, involving interactions between waves, currents, water levels and the bathymetry, that present particular challenges for numerical models. Here, the effects of a grid-spacing dependent horizontal mixing on the wave-current interactions are studied. Near the shore, wave rays diverge from channels towards bar crests because of refraction by topography and...

In plants, animals, and fungi, DNA methylation is frequently associated with gene silencing, yet little is known about the role of the methylation in silencing. In Neurospora crassa, repeated sequences are silenced by repeat-induced point mutation (RIP) and genes that have suffered numerous GC --> AT mutations by RIP are typically methylated at remaining cytosines. We investigated possible effe...

RIP is nucleus limited. We know this because the specialized cells that carry out RIP are heterokaryotic, with nuclei from both parents. When a sequence is duplicated in one nucleus but not the other, the lone copy is never silenced. The mechanism of RIP is unknown but probably involves DNA:DNA pairing (Figure 1) followed by methyla-Repeated DNA and cytosine methylation are common tion and deam...